14 DAY TRIAL // Mint, the online personal finance service, has been seeing a healthy growth since launch a couple of years ago and its growth has raised interest from software maker Intuit, which will apparently acquire the service for around $170 million, with the announcement coming within a few days, TechCrunch reports.
Founded in 2007, Mint offers free online tools for finance management. It allows users to link their bank accounts with their Mint account and have an easy way of overviewing their spending. It also analyzes the data and offers ways of cutting down on several related expenses. It claims it has found ways for its users to save a collective $300 million so far. It generates revenue by offering alternative services from financial institutions. It could also use the data it amassed to offer insights on what and how consumers are spending for any number of industries.
It has raised close to $32 million in funding in three rounds, most recently just last month, when it got $14 million from a number of existing and new investors. The latest round put the company at a reported valuation of $140 million. The site has around 1.4 million users and processes transactions worth $175 billion and assets worth $47 billion.
Intuit develops several software products for personal use and small businesses. It also offers a competing product, Quicken, and had to stop charging for its online version last year faced with increased competition from Mint. Still, its growth has been stagnant recently and is looking at the rising star in personal finance to help with that.
The two companies have had somewhat of a troubled history after Intuit made some veiled accusations that it is exaggerating its growth and user numbers. Mint claimed it added 3,000 new users every day and grew from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a few months. Intuit later said it only wanted to know how exactly the startup was measuring this growth and whom it counted as a user.